Scientists have long believed there are “rogue black holes” wandering the universe, but we’ve never had good evidence of one until now. An international team of astronomers has released a study pointing to what appears to be the first roaming black hole, . It was no simple feat to spot an object that gives off no light as it drifts through the cold, empty space between stars. After years of observations, the preliminary study is now available. Black holes were proposed in the early 20th century, but it wasn’t until decades later that we had proof of their existence.
(Photo: Videocardz)The gaming world is waiting with bated breath for more details about Intel’s new Arc GPUs, which will mark the company’s return to the discrete GPU market after its failed attempt with Larrabee over 10 years ago. Things will be different this time, we’re told, as the company has hired some serious engineering talent and is ready to take on both Nvidia and AMD with what it describes as a “high performance” GPU replete with next-gen features. Despite all the PR generated by Intel so far, we still don’t have a lot of firm information about the GPUs, including their specs.
(Photo: PLA Labs)A gaming hardware designer who previously worked with Razer has unveiled what he believes is the future of gaming for first person shooters (FPS) on PC, and it’s actually a unique design unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. It’s called the Alt Avatar Motion Controller, and it jettisons the keyboard part of the “keyboard/mouse” combo that the vast majority of PC gamers use today in favor of a new controller design that’s used with a mouse for what the inventor thinks is the best of both worlds for FPS games on PC. The device is the brainchild of Edward Larkin, who invented the mouse bungee and eventually sold it to Razor, .
China is reportedly planning a new chip consortium dedicated to semiconductor research and development. The new project, dubbed the “cross-border semiconductor work committee,” will launch this year. It’s to be coordinated by a lab at Tsinghua University, President Xi Jinping’s alma mater. According , “the role of the committee will be to strengthen cooperation between the Chinese and foreign semiconductor industries.” That’s to be expected. China’s number one import is semiconductors and the country depends on importing chips it can’t manufacture within mainland China. Huawei’s presence on the Entity List doesn’t prevent other Chinese companies from working with Western firms.
When NASA’s (JWST) was on the ground, it seemed like all we ever heard was bad news — delays, redesigns, cost overruns. Ever since the launch though, all the team’s hard work has been paying off. The , the telescope has a fuel surplus, and it . Now, Webb has finally done the one thing telescopes are supposed to do: . Webb’s first light came from a star known as HD 84406, which sits in the constellation Ursa Major about 258 light years away from Earth. However, Webb didn’t “see” the star in the way you’d expect. This is just the beginning of Webb’s months-long calibration procedure, so the instruments registered 18 individual points of light, one from each mirror segment (see the simulation below).
(Photo: Fraunhofer)Researchers in Germany have found that equipping traffic lights with AI technology could help reduce the amount of time drivers spend at intersections. Traffic lights usually coordinate with induction loop sensors or infrared sensors, which are either built into the roads or affixed atop traffic lights to detect the presence of vehicles. When the sensors notice that vehicles have queued, they trigger a change in the signal itself that allows those vehicles to pass. Signals may also be influenced by predetermined schedules, which (if your municipality knows what it’s doing) are based on the flow and needs of traffic around specific times, like rush hour.
The company formerly known as Facebook has filed a form with the SEC indicating it’s considering yanking Instagram and Facebook out of Europe due to a recent European Union court ruling that affects the way US companies can handle European users’ data. The ruling would prevent Meta, located in the United States, from accessing information about its European users from anywhere in the US. This would effectively prevent the company from doing any kind of customized ad targeting. According to Meta, if it can’t do ad targeting, it might as well just take its ball and go home. This whole kerfuffle began in 2011.
In all likelihood, Microsoft is about to be the proud new owner of a little game studio called Activision Blizzard — you might have heard of it. Microsoft has . Certainly locking down future exclusives is a big motivation in the era of The Great Gaming Consolidation, but Activision Blizzard also makes a ton of money. The company’s 2021 financial results are in, and it made more money than ever. More than that, it earned a record $5.1 billion just from microtransactions, . That’s a lot of horse armor. The lingering COVID-19 pandemic has kept interest in gaming high, so it’s no surprise that revenues are up.
(Photo: Johannes Plenio/Unsplash)Scientists have confirmed that a shockingly large bolt of lightning from 2020 has set a world record for the longest flash. The bolt, which lit up the night sky on April 29, 2020, ran across Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. It measured a total of 477.2 miles (768 km) long, easily surpassing the threshold to be considered a megaflash, which is a minimum of 62 miles (100 km) long. Using satellite technology, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes Tuesday that the bolt broke the world record for the longest documented flash by length.
